African American parents are increasingly taking their kids’ education into their own hands—and in many cases, it’s to protect them from institutional racism and stereotyping.

Marvell Robinson was in kindergarten when a classmate reportedly poured an anthill on him at the playground. After that, the gibes reportedly became sharper: “Why are you that color?” one boy taunted at the swing set, leaving Marvell scared and speechless. The slow build of racial bullying would push his mother, Vanessa Robinson, to pull him from his public school and homeschool him instead.

Marvell is one of an estimated 220,000 African American children currently being homeschooled, according to the National Home Education Research Institute. Black families have become one of the fastest-growing demographics in homeschooling, with black students making up an estimated 10 percent of the homeschooling population. (For comparison’s sake, they make up 16 percent of all public-school students nationwide, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.)

And while white homeschooling families traditionally cite religious or moral disagreements with public schools in their decision to pull them out of traditional classroom settings, studies indicate black families are more likely to cite the culture of low expectations for African American students or dissatisfaction with how their children—especially boys—are treated in schools.

Marvell, now 7 and in the second grade, was the only black student in both his kindergarten and first-grade classes, and one of only a few black students in his San Diego elementary school, according to his mother. And Marvell’s Asperger syndrome—a high-functioning form of autism that makes social interaction difficult—only added to the curiosity and cruelty with which his fellow classmates approached him, Robinson added. She was concerned the school wasn’t doing enough about it. “I just thought maybe I could do a better job myself,” she said.

“The schools want little black boys to behave like little white girls, and that’s just never going to happen. They are different.”

“They said, ‘kids will be kids,’ and the only solution was for Marvell to be monitored—like he had done something wrong,” Robinson said. “In the end, I don’t think that anyone should have to monitor my kid” because of other kids’ behavior.

Robinson allowed Marvell to finish first grade there and began homeschooling him when he started second grade in September. Robinson adjusted her nursing schedule to include 12-hour shifts on the weekends so she could take on educating Marvell during the week. Her husband, a sous chef at a restaurant in downtown San Diego, continues to work full-time and participates in lessons when he can.

And while her primary motivation was giving Marvell individualized attention, Robinson was unable to separate her worries about racial bullying from the decision. “If he hadn’t been bullied I would have really looked into transferring schools, or going back to where I grew up in Kansas,” she said. “At least in Kansas it was more racially diverse. I assumed that’s how the schools would be in San Diego, but I was wrong.”

Robinson likely joins hundreds of other African American parents who’ve decided to homeschool their children because of dissatisfaction with the traditional campuses. Indeed, Joyce Burges at National Black Home Educators has watched her membership grow “exponentially” in the 15 years since the organization was founded, a trend also reflected in Marvell’s home state of California. While Burges’s national conferences in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, used to attract only around 50 people, they now attract upwards of 400, she said—a noteworthy number for the first organization for black homeschoolers in a sea of predominantly white organizations.

Research conducted by Marie-Josée Cérol—known professionally as Ama Mazama—also offers insight into the growing trend. A faculty member in the African American Studies department at Temple University in Philadelphia, Mazama began homeschooling her three children 12 years ago and realized quickly that there was little research on black homeschoolers.

“Whenever there are mentions of African American homeschoolers, it’s assumed that we homeschool for the same reasons as European-American homeschoolers, but this isn’t really the case,” she said. “Because of the unique circumstances of black people in this country, there is really a new story to be told.”

In a 2012 report published in the Journal of Black Studies, Mazama surveyed black homeschooling families from around the country and found that most chose to educate their children at home at least in part to avoid school-related racism. Mazama calls this rationale “racial protectionism” and said it is a response to the inability of schools to meet the needs of black students. “We have all heard that the American education system is not the best and is falling behind in terms of international standards,” she said. “But this is compounded for black children, who are treated as though they are not as intelligent and cannot perform as well, and therefore the standards for them should be lower.”

Mazama said schools also rob black children of the opportunity to learn about their own culture because of a “Euro-centric” world-history curriculum. “Typically, the curriculum begins African American history with slavery and ends it with the Civil Rights Movement,” she said. “You have to listen to yourself simply being talked about as a descendent of slaves, which is not empowering. There is more to African history than that.” Mazama’s studies show that black parents who choose to homeschool often teach a comprehensive view of African history by incorporating more detailed descriptions of ancient African civilizations and accounts of successful African people throughout history. This allows children to “build their sense of racial pride and self esteem,” she said.

Meanwhile, Cheryl Fields-Smith, an associate professor in the department of Educational Theory and Practice at the University of Georgia, has in her own studies found similar motivations among black homeschoolers. “The schools want little black boys to behave like little white girls, and that’s just never going to happen. They are different,” she said. “I think black families who are in a position to homeschool can use homeschooling to avoid the issues of their children being labeled ‘trouble makers’ and the suggestion that their children need special-education services because they learn and behave differently.”

It’s assumed that African Americans homeschool for the same reasons European Americans do, but this is seldom the case.

What it means to be “in a position to homeschool” has long been a question in the homeschooling community. According to Mazama, regardless of race, homeschooling families tend to be wealthier and better educated because they must have the economic ability to have one parent stay home full time. Home education, she added, is “not a middle-class phenomenon.”

However, both Mazama and Fields-Smith say this is beginning to change; barriers that in the past might have left homeschooling out of the question for many working-class families are being lifted. Greater access to public-education resources is making homeschooling more appealing, too. Mazama pointed to the availability of subsidies ensuring homeschooled children have access to standard public-school nutritional offerings, for example, and public programs allowing homeschooled students to enroll in extracurricular activities and after-school sports as reasons why families are increasingly seeing homeschooling as a valid alternative to traditional education. In fact, Fields-Smith is in the process of writing a book on black, single homeschooling mothers because she sees “more and more families of less means” making the decision to sacrifice traditional career paths so that they can pull their children from school.

Rhonda McKnight would be an archetypical candidate for Fields-Smith’s book. As a single mother, she works about 45 hours per week as a contractor for the state of Georgia—often at odd hours and during the weekend—so she can homeschool her 8-year-old son, Micah. “It’s not easy,” McKnight said. “It’s extremely difficult to balance everything.” While a common criticism of homeschooling is a potential lack of socialization for children, Mazama said the growing number of homeschooling groups solves this problem. McKnight for her part joined a homeschooling collective that, in addition to providing Micah time with other children, also helps her manage her workload. The group gathers on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays to engage in extracurricular and hands-on learning activities that can’t easily be done in the home, giving McKnight some time to herself—and, of course, some time to work.

Micah, who like Marvell is autistic, didn’t learn well in a classroom with 25 students. McKnight also felt as though his teacher was misinterpreting the symptoms of his disability as behavioral problems and accusing him of “behavior that was not typical to him.” “I don’t know how racially motivated it was at the time,” McKnight said. “But even black teachers are taught certain things they are not even aware of. Our culture tends towards labeling our boys.”

The poor education, according to McKnight, left Micah significantly behind in several subjects, which means she’s now trying to pack as much into his schedule as possible to get him back on track. “He doesn’t really get a day off—not right now, because he’s just behind. I feel like he doesn’t really have time to relax,” McKnight said, explaining she wasn’t aware just how behind he was until she started to homeschool him. Most devastating, she said, was when she realized her son was reading well below his expected third-grade level: “I felt like I had totally failed him, and the school had totally failed him, and the only thing I could do was work with him one-on-one to get him caught up.”

To get Micah up to par in his academics, McKnight has employed a customized mix of purchased homeschool lesson plans and learning materials she developed herself—all on top of what he learns at the collective. When Micah is home, McKnight said her days are “totally dedicated to him.” They work for at least an hour on each of the core subjects, studying within the grade level that best suits him in each area. On days he returns from the collective, McKnight reads with him for two or three hours with the goal of getting him to a third-grade level by the end of the year. Lessons even continue on Saturdays and Sundays. He’s at his father’s place every other weekend, where he continues his reading schedule, and on the weekends that he’s home McKnight takes him on educational field trips—Atlanta’s many museums are frequent destinations.

“I felt like I had totally failed him, and the school had totally failed him, and the only thing I could do was work with him one-on-one to get him caught up.”

It’s this ability to shape everyday activities and lessons to meet the personal needs of each child that Fields-Smith finds so promising about homeschooling—especially for black families. “There is no one way to homeschool,” she said, noting all of the families that she consulted for her study were “catering to their children and customizing their education for them” instead of using a single stock homeschooling curriculum.

Still, Mazama and Fields-Smith acknowledge that homeschooling is controversial, particularly in the black community. “For African Americans there is a sense of betrayal when you leave public schools in particular,” Mazama said. “Because the struggle to get into those schools was so harsh and so long, there is this sense of loyalty to the public schools. People say, ‘We fought to get into these schools, and now you are just going to leave?’”

For Paula Penn-Nabrit, an African American scholar and writer who homeschooled her children in the 1990s, this struggle hits very close to home. Her husband’s uncle, James Nabrit, argued Brown v. Board of Education in front of the Supreme Court alongside Thurgood Marshall; he later served as the president of Howard University. When Penn-Nabrit decided to pull her three sons from public school, it angered many of her black friends. “A lot of people felt that because my family was intimately involved in the effort to integrate schools, that for me to pull my children out of schools was a betrayal of all that work,” she said. “But it really wasn’t. The case had nothing to do with what I, as a parent, decide I want for my child. That decision meant the state can’t decide to give me less than, but I can decide I want more than.”

In 2003, Penn-Nabrit published a book, Morning by Morning: How We Home-Schooled Our African-American Sons to the Ivy League, in an effort to help others repeat her successes with homeschooling. Her older twin sons, Damon and Charles, both attended Princeton, and her youngest son, Evan, went to Amherst College and then to the University of Pennsylvania.* The book, according to Penn-Nabrit, received “a lot of open hostility”—with several people accusing her of racism—because it detailed accounts of the discrimination her sons allegedly faced in public school and emphasized an Afrocentric approach to education.

“I just want my son to be a free thinker and to question everything … I wish that when I was growing up, I could have done that.”

Upon deciding to homeschool their sons, Penn-Nabrit and her husband, both of whom have degrees in the humanities, elected to teach them the subject areas they knew well. For the remaining science and math courses, however, they hired black, mostly male, graduate students from the Ohio State University to take over—in large part so that the boys had exposure to successful people who looked like them. After all, according to the Department of Education, less than 2 percent of current classroom teachers nationwide are African American males; until their homeschooling, Penn-Nabrit’s children had never had a black man as a teacher.

“Most black people go to school and never have a teacher that looks like them, and this is particularly true for black boys,” she said. Similar concerns, she noted, led to the creation of single-sex schools—a particularly apt comparison for Penn-Nabrit, who attended Wellesley. “If women benefit from having a period of isolation from the larger group, that could be applicable to black boys as well.”

Mazama, meanwhile, said that rooting children in their heritage in an educational setting allows them to do better emotionally and socially. “If anything, homeschooled black children would be much stronger because they would not have been devastated at an early age by racism,” she said. She explained that the absence of these early destructive experiences, combined with a heritage-focused curriculum, ultimately allows children to recognize and deal constructively with racism—”not by denying it, but by confronting it because they are comfortable with who they are.”

“That’s the way I teach my own children,” she continued. “I have seen this work.”

Back in San Diego, Vanessa Robinson has also seen it work. Now that she’s been homeschooling Marvell for five months, she notices that he is better adjusted and has moved farther along academically than he did in public school.

“He’s a completely different person,” she said, reporting that his confidence is higher compared to where it was in public school, allowing him to make friends in his neighborhood and learn more quickly. Robinson said that, while she bought a set of lesson plans with a suggested timeline, Marvell now moves so quickly that she has to add lessons together from an array of instructional programs just to keep up. And when he finds something he loves, she lets him dive deep. “Right now, Marvell says he wants to work for NASA, so we’re really focusing on getting in depth into science and space,” she said. His new interest is a thrilling prospect for Robinson, a registered nurse with a background in science.

“I just want my son to be a free thinker and to question everything,” she said. “I wish that when I was growing up, I could have done that.”

Hi everyone, I’m doing a short series titled “Never Forget” that highlights interesting facts about important African Personalities. Today’s post is about Nelson Mandela. Below are 7 interesting facts about the man who led South Africa to freedom:

FACT 1:

Mandela’s birth name was Rolihlahla Mandela. “Rolihlahla” which loosely translates as “troublemaker” in the Xhosa language, but strictly translated, the word means “pulling the branch of a tree.” He was given the first name ‘Nelson’ by a teacher in grade school.

FACT 2:

Mandela was no stranger to trouble. He was expelled from the University of Fort Hare after joining a student protest. He later completed his degree through Unisa and later got a law degree from Wits University.

FACT 3:

Mandela suffered the losses of two close family members while imprisoned. His mother died in 1968 and his eldest son, Thembi, died the following year. Mandela wasn’t permitted to pay his respects at their funerals.

FACT 4:

Mandela reportedly received at least three offers to be set free from prison. However, he declined each time because he was offered his freedom on the condition that he reject his earlier activism in some way.

FACT 5:

He was on the U.S. terror watch list: Mandela wasn’t removed from the U.S. terror watch list until 2008 — at age 89. He and other members of the African National Congress were placed on it because of their militant fight against apartheid.

FACT 6:

He had a cameo in a Spike Lee film: He had a big part in Spike Lee’s 1992 biopic “Malcolm X.” At the very end of the movie, he plays a teacher reciting Malcolm X’s famous speech to a room full of Soweto school kids. But the pacifist Mandela wouldn’t say “by any means necessary.” So Lee cut back to footage of Malcolm X to close out the film.

FACT 7:

He married a first lady. Before tying the knot with Mandela on his 80th birthday, Graca Machel was married to Mozambique President Samora Machel. Her marriage to Mandela after her husband’s death means she has been the first lady of two nations.

Thank you so much for reading. Any suggestions on who I should do next? Send me a message on twitter.

The Jollof rice war has reached the presidential level with Nigerian Vice President Yemi Osinbajo coming out to defend his country as having the best of the West African delicacy.

His assertion over the weekend was in reaction to Information Minister Lai Mohammed’s internationally televised assumption that Senegal makes the best Jollof rice.

Lai Mohammed’s words were described as treasonous by Nigerians on social media who attacked him for betraying them in a decade-old battle with Ghana over who has the best Jollof rice.

“We all know that Nigerian Jollof rice is the best! We beat the Ghanaians and the Senegalese hands down,” Vice President Yemi Osibanjo came to the rescue of Mohammed who was believed to have misunderstood the question.

Osibanjo went further to spearhead the Nigerian pride by citing the country’s achievements worldwide including the recent victory of British-Nigerian boxer and heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua.

“We have everything, and our people are doing incredibly innovative things. For example, we are at the moment developing the most sophisticated animation technology in Africa.

“Our music and entertainment industry is the fastest growing in the world. Nigerians have won every prize in literature, from the Noble prize to the Pulitzer.

“Only last year, a Nigerian girl won a gold medal at the Olympics, Morolake Akinosun. Last Saturday, a Nigerian boxer won the world heavyweight title. Anthony Oluwafemi Joshua won the WBA becoming the boxing champion of the world.

“Last year Oluyinka Olutoye, a Nigerian surgeon successfully took out a baby from her mother’s womb, operated on the womb, and put the baby back in, and the baby was carried full term and was born naturally — a feat previously unheard of.

“And of course, nobody is as funny as Nigerians, whether profession or amateur. We even have a member of the national assembly who recently launched a CD; Aje kun iya ni o je. Who hasn’t heard of Aje kun iya ni o je.

“We are the most innovative entrepreneurs. The other day someone showed me a text; the young man had invited him to a book launch titled: Seven Steps to Becoming a Professional Whistleblower,” he said at a church event on the theme: Nigeria Recovering from Economic Recession.

What is Jollof rice?

Jollof rice is a common dish in West Africa that derived its name from the Wolof people of Senegal, hence its undebatable Senegalese origin.

Among the countries that consume this dish are Senegal, Gambia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Togo, Cameroon, Mali and Ghana.

However, two countries – Ghana and Nigeria – have adopted the dish as not only a cultural delicacy, but a subject of contention as to who prepares it best.

The reddish one-pot dish is prepared with rice and tomoato sauce with alternative ingredients that slightly vary by country.

The Model casting call for the Africa Fashion Week Nigeria 2017, would go down in history as one of the biggest of its kind in sub-saharan Africa. As early as 8 am on Friday 27 April, hundreds of aspiring models for the AFWN had already gathered in groups with their agents. It was a massive turnout which provoked discussions among those present at the Women Society Skill Centre, Lekki, venue of the casting.

Sola Olabisi, a fashion photographer, who attended the shows last year, said he was not surprised that the turnout of models jostling for Africa Fashion Week Nigeria platform is record breaking because the organizers have a way of putting up remarkable shows while promoting Africa fashion to the rest of the world.The models want identify with the growth and reputation of the brand.

The model casting is part of build up towards the AFWN 2017 that will come up between June 3 & 4 at the National Arts Theatre, Lagos. The organizers had two iconic shows in April as pre-events shows. The first one took place at the National Theater, while the second one was at the Tinubu Square, Lagos. The iconic shows held at historic veues, as a way of blending the creativity of designers with the richness of our cultural heritage of Lagos.

The Founder of Africa Fashion Week, Ronke Ademiluyi said she was overwhelmed by the large turn of models who aspire to join the fashion week every year. “The platform keeps growing every year with remarkable shows. We are not going to relent.That is why government and multinationals should support us. AFWN is more than entertainment. We add economic value to African designers on our platform with our creativity every year.”

For info on becoming a showcasing designer at AFWNigeria 2017: info@africafashionweeknigeria.com

On Saturday, 29th April 2017, Anthony Oluwafemi Olaseni Joshua (AJ) made history before a sold out Wembley crowd when he beat Wladimir Klitchko to add the WBA world heavy weight title to his trophy cabinet.

Both fighters gave an enthralling performance that took the fight all the way to the 11th round and left the crowd in rapturous cheers.

At 41, Klitchko gave this fight everything and in round 6 gave the predominantly British crowd a scare when his calculated punches took Anthony to the canvas for the first time in his career.

All was made right when in the 11th round a brutal uppercut connected with Klitchko’s jaw stunning the former heavyweight champion and causing him to slump to the mat. He got up two more times before referee David Fields called the bout giving Joshua the victory.

Joshua, whose mom is Nigerian, made waves in his motherland as many praised his victory. He has not turned a blind eye to this and has promised to provide some form of aid to Nigeria as a way to give back.

In an Interview at the The Laureus World Sports Awards, when quizzed about what his secret to winning was, he cheekily laughed and said, “that’s the pounded yam, eba, egusi. That’s the secret of the success”

Well Nigerians take a bow, your food just produced an iconic world champion.

Chairman, Econet Wireless Group Strive Masiyiwa led the trio from Africa by ranking 33 for his energetic and well-rounded philanthropy making an impact in Africa, the magazine noted.

Masiyiwa has been lauded for supporting orphans, funding scholarships, and fighting hunger, poverty, and Ebola.

Novelist and Essayist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was ranked 42 for her powerful voice in challenging her audiences to think differently and more expansively about Africa, identity, race, and gender.

Adichie is considered a feminist icon and a fearless political and cultural critic.

Executive Director, Sexual Minorities Uganda Frank Mugisha ranked 44 for speaking out against Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill, which mandated life in prison for LGBT Ugandans, and led the campaign that eventually led to the bill’s invalidation by the courts.

37-year-old Mugisha came out at age 14 and he leads the LGBT community to face open hostilities.

The three are in the list with other great world leaders including the head of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and American basketball star LeBron James.

The Senior Editor of the magazine, Geoff Colvin explained that they were selected for excelling at leadership by acknowledging reality and offering hope, bringing followers physically together and building bridges.

LONDON CITY!!, we are about to shut you down!
Upfront & Personal Global Management Consultants proudly presents One Africa Music Fest London, UK. One Africa Music Fest is coming to London for the first time ever on Saturday, 13th May 2017.

This event will take place at The SSE, London, UK.
Guests will fill THE SSE ARENA, WEMBLEY to see live performances from Africa’s biggest musical stars.
The first list of confirmed artists – performing on the 13th of May 2017 are Africa’s Energetic Duo, Pop Sensation P-Square, East Africa’s biggest female Afro-pop artist Victoria Kimani, the prince of highlife aka the slow winding – sexy ladies’ man Flavour N’abania, famed “Gongo – Aso” crooner 9ice, Nigeria’s very own ‘Beast from the East’ Phyno. and Nigeria’s Queen of pop music Tiwa Savage

This unforgettable night will be hosted by Africa’s King of R&B, Banky W!
Tickets will go on sale Friday, 20th January 2017 at 10 a.m. and can be purchased by calling +44 844 815 0815 or online at ssearena.co.uk or axs.com. Tickets are also available in person at the SSE Arena Wembley.